Wikimedia Foundation Report, August 2012

You are more than welcome to edit the wiki version of this report for the purposes of usefulness, presentation, etc., and to add translations of the “Highlights” excerpts. Video of the monthly Wikimedia Foundation metrics and activities meeting covering the month of August (September 4, 2012) Data and Trends Wikimedia Foundation metrics and activities meeting, September 4, 2012 Global unique visitors for July: 451.82 million (-3.80% compared with June; +14.81% compared with the previous year) (comScore data for all Wikimedia Foundation projects; comScore will release August data later in September) Page requests for August: 18.2 billion (+2.6% compared with July;

Financials

Wikimedia Foundation YTD Revenue and Expenses vs Plan as of July 31, 2012

Wikimedia Foundation YTD Expenses by Functions as of July 31, 2012

(Financial information is only available for July 2012 at the time of this report.)

All financial information presented is for the Month-To-Date and Year-To-Date July 31, 2012.

Revenue

$346,647

Expenses:

Engineering Group

$1,145,753

Fundraiser Group

$221,223

Global Development Group

$541,308

Governance Group

$96,465

Legal/Community Advocacy/Communications Group

$185,852

Finance/HR/Admin Group

$413,077

Total Expenses

$2,603,678

Total surplus/(loss)

($2,257,031)

Revenue for the month-to-date and year-to-date is $347K vs plan of $1.5MM, approximately $1.1M or 76% under plan, primarily due to $1M from Sloan Foundation budgeted for July but actually received in August.

Expenses for the month-to-date and year-to-date is $2.6M vs plan of $3.2M, approximately $639K or 20% under than plan, primarily due to lower personnel related expenses and awards and grants associated with Wikimania DC that had been reflected in FY 11-12.

Cash position is $23.6M as of July 31, 2012, which is approximately 6.7 months of expenses.

Highlights

In preparation for September’s “Wiki Loves Monuments“, the worldwide contest to contribute freely licensed photos of cultural heritage sites to Wikimedia Commons, the mobile team released the new Wiki Loves Monuments app for Android. Users can find nearby monuments, or search for them on a list. One can take photos from within the app and directly upload them to Wikimedia Commons. This is the first time that a mobile contribution mechanism is officially supported. Others ways of contributing to Wikimedia projects using mobile devices are being considered, too.

Language support tools released in “Project Milkshake”

The Internationalisation/Localisation (i18n/l10n) team reported progress on its Project Milkshake, an effort to release its existing internationalisation-related JavaScript components as standard jQuery libraries. They include an i18n framework that supports parameter replacements and grammar-, plural-, and gender-dependent translations, a library to support WebFonts (fonts that do not need to be installed on the reader’s computer), and a library to provide text input methods in the browser.

Request for Comment on legal fees assistance program

In a Request for Comment (RfC), the Foundation proposes a program intended to help pay for the legal defense fees of eligible users in specified support roles – such as certain community administrator, arbitrator, email response, or project governance functions – if a lawsuit is brought against them in relation to their activities in these roles.

Pilot project on Arabic Wikipedia increases contributions by new editors

On the Arabic Wikipedia, a new “contribution portal” was created in June, as a pilot project within the Editor Growth and Contribution Program. It offers simple visual tutorials for six basic editing tasks, such as fixing a typo or creating a new article. It has already increased the ratio of new users who start contributing, according to an analysis of the first phase (in English and Arabic).

Contribution portal on the Arabic Wikipedia (phase 0)

Engineering

A detailed report of the Engineering Department’s activities for August 2012 can be found at:

Operations

Site infrastructure

We built additional MySQL servers for each of the clusters in Ashburn, all in preparation for the primary data center migration in the coming quarter. A database tree chart provides the latest information on our database clusters. We also successfully updated and deployed the NetApp storage servers, and enabled replication from Tampa to Ashburn.

Network Infrastructure

The usual traffic surge due to the new school year caused an increase in package loss on our Tampa internal network. We upgraded the links between the racks, and installed a new passive optics (CWDM) system between the 2 floors of the Tampa datacenter hosting our servers, giving us effectively a 4X capacity increase.

‘Originals’ (original multimedia files that are uploaded) were successfully copied over to the Swift cluster from the legacy NFS servers. In addition to serving thumbnails (which was completed last month), Swift is now also the primary object store for Originals.

The Parsoid team reached a major milestone in August by implementing a template output encapsulation algorithm, and started to use it to support expanded template round-tripping. In parallel with this and the usual smaller tweaks, work on a C++ port of the parser was started. The port is expected to allow an efficient integration with PHP and Lua, improve performance and allow the parallelization of the parser in the longer term.

This month, we developed a range of new features for Article Feedback, which is now deployed on 10% of the English Encyclopedia. We are now in our productization phase (support for more platforms, scalability, code re-factoring, localization, metrics, mobile) and are aiming for a full release to 100% of English Wikipedia by the end of October 2012 — with other wiki projects starting later this year.

We deployed a ‘pre-release’ version of Page Curation on the English Wikipedia. This new product includes two main features: the New Pages Feed, a dynamic list of new pages for review by community patrollers, and the Curation Toolbar, an optional panel on article pages, which enables editors to quickly review these pages. We are now preparing for a full release of Page Curation on the English Wikipedia at the end of September 2012.

The team continued to work on the Universal Language Selector (ULS): the display settings dialog was completed and is now able to show and set WebFonts. The lists of languages were tweaked to emphasize those likely to be chosen by the user, based on their location and past selections. Translation memory support was deployed on Meta and other wikis with the translation extension enabled, and CLDR plurals support was merged into the core master. User experience testing of the Translate extension is in progress.

The mobile team released three new betas for the WLM app and published the last one on Google Play. We finalized many new features like saving for later, showing current location, and cleaned up data issues. The contest started on September 1st. (see also general “Highlights” section).

We fixed issues upstream, and cleaned up the Gerrit installation on Labs to more accurately mirror production—also cleaning up the production setup along the way. In September, we’ll be upgrading to Gerrit 2.5, which brings a bunch of new features (like plugins), and getting repositories replicated out to GitHub.

We added two new major features to the AbuseFilter extension, global rules and global throttling. These features will allow the creation of filters that apply to all Wikimedia wikis, which is effective for stopping cross-wiki spambots.

Eight of Wikimedia’s nine Summer of Code students passed. Their achievements have already led to improvements in the Wikimedia Incubator, and improvements to Semantic MediaWiki and UploadWizard will reach users soon.

Fundraising

Major Gifts and Foundations

Planned a “Thank you event” at Googleplex for September for Google employees who give to Wikimedia.

Sara Lasner completed a East Coast trip to meet with donors.

Worked with Morgan Stanley to be included in their communications/recommendations to the donor advised funds.

Annual Fundraiser

Ran a week long fundraising test on Spanish Wikipedia in preparation for the annual campaign. Variables tested included: banner and donation page messages, ask amounts, form field variations. Results from the test are still being analyzed and will be posted on Meta.

Storytelling interviews that were recorded on video at Wikimania 2012 are currently being edited with the goal of creating a short educational video about Wikipedia.

Launched Amazon Payments ewallet as a donation option for USA donors

Translation of fundraising messages in various languges increased, with Joseph Seddon improving outreach.

A beta version of the Global Development dashboard allows project owners to evaluate the impact of their work on an ongoing basis.

Wikipedia Zero launched in Cameroon.

FDC nominations closed on August 15 with 42 nominations for FDC members and 13 for Ombudsperson.

Mobile and Business Development

Wikipedia Zero launched in Cameroon with Orange and in Montenegro with Telenor. Total of 7 country launches to date.

Continued launch preparation for additional forthcoming TBA Wikipedia Zero partners, along with planning of pilot program for Wikipedia by text message.

Negotiation discussions proceeded with potential new Wikipedia Zero partners in Asia and Africa.

Global Learning and Grantmaking

The GLEE team: Global Grantmaking, Learning and Evaluation Enterprise

Learning

Beta version of the Global Development dashboard to allow project owners to easily track their projects, to be transparent with their work, and to evaluate impact on an ongoing basis: project owners can easily create visualizations and have access to information they need.

Developing more robust ways of designing project pilots within the Global Development Team.

Evaluation of Wikimania Scholarships process to re-think the overall process and create a more effective program.

Funds Dissemination

The FDC portal was launched on August 1st with support from Heather Walls and Bridgespan.

Work continues on key documents related to the FDC process: the Proposal form and the Staff Assessment form were reviewed by the community and finalized.

Bridgespan and the FDC team have been working on orientation training materials, continuous improvement materials, and most importantly – a process document for how the FDC might finalise their recommendations for Round 1.

Nominations and selection process: posted messages on 600 village pumps and put a CentralNotice up for several days before nominations closed on 15 August, with 42 nominations for FDC members and 13 for Ombudsperson. Criteria for selection include Wikimedia history, Non-WM history, Alignment with the (FDC) criteria [in the framework], Overall portfolio mix [languages, region, gender, chapter/wikiproject/community experience etc.].

US Cultural Partnerships

Catalyst Programs

Brazil Catalyst Project

Brazil Education program

30 participated in an Education Program Workshop in São Paulo: professors, teaching assistants, ambassadors, Wikipedia volunteers who learned how to edit Wikipedia and about their roles as campus ambassadors. Professors worked on planning and methodologies to develop the program within their courses, and attended a dinner to share and learn from past experiences.

Planning of the upcoming professor orientation in Rio de Janeiro: A workshop for professors will be held on 22 September at PUC-Rio; over the last couple of weeks, we worked on finding a location for the event. A draft schedule can be found on the wiki.

Start of term survey: We conducted a survey among professors. Based on the preliminary results, we’ve been following up with Professors regarding the design of course pages.

Meetings with Frank and possible partners: We’ve been exploring a potential partnership opportunity with UniRio; we’ve also met with a group of professors at COPPE-UFRJ and gave a presentation about the Education Program; meetings with professors have surfaced a high level of enthusiasm about the program

Community gathering in São Paulo

Brazil team and volunteers have been working on Portuguese tutorials online and in print to support selected courses and collaborators on other activities: Guia do Estudante, Guia do Professor

Community gatherings in São Paulo and Rio, volunteers are working on a proposal for bringing the Education Program to Brazilian high schools.

National Program, Brazil

Gathering and analyzing data regarding experiment developed by the community in the first semester, working on metrics and tools to analyze a campaign community is developing to bring IPs into creating accounts, gathering information and references to debate possible experiments on the use of CAPTCHA in the Portuguese Wikipedia:

Chandigarh: Workshops: Punjabi Wikipedia workshop in Amritsar, 2 workshops in British Library, Chandigarh and Wikipedia Club Chandigarh announced, Facebook group with workshop support system, meetings with curator of Chandigarh Museum for potential GLAM project, professors at Panjab University in Chandigarh

How to edit Nepali Wikipedia

How to edit Hindi Wikipedia

Education Program

New on-wiki Education newsletter debuts: At the Wikipedia in education session at Wikimania’s unconference, volunteers around the world agreed to start a new monthly newsletter about Wikipedia’s use in education for Wikimedians. The newsletter, delivered on talk pages, is designed to keep Wikimedians running programs or those interested in starting a program up to date about what’s happening in different education initiatives around the world. This Month in Education will come out on the 15th of each month. August issue: <http://outreach.wikimedia.org/wiki/Education_Portal/Newsletter/August_2012>

Professor and Ambassador Orientation, São Paulo

Brazil Pilot kicks off second phase: On August 11, the second phase of the Education Pilot in Brazil began with a workshop in São Paulo for orienting new professors and new Ambassadors, hosted by Pontifical Catholic University of São Paulo. Participants included seven new professors, four interested ones who might join the program in 2013, and dozens of new Campus Ambassadors trained by experienced Campus Ambassadors and Wikipedians. Education Program Director Frank Schulenburg traveled to Brazil to participate in the workshop, and participants were excited to get started on working with Wikipedia in education in Brazil.

ASA Annual Meeting features Wikipedia initiative: Wikimedia Foundation staff Annie Lin and Jami Mathewson traveled to Denver, Colorado, in mid August to attend the American Sociological Association’s Annual Meeting. ASA has joined other academic organizations in starting a Wikipedia initiative to encourage sociology professors to edit and have students edit Wikipedia articles to improve information available about sociology. Instructor and Ambassador Piotr Konieczny helped out at the booth, and hundreds of people learned more about using Wikipedia in the classroom. <http://www.asanet.org/about/wiki_Initiative.cfm>

Journal article shows four case studies: A journal article published in E-Learning and Digital Media last month describes how four professors who participated in the United States Education Program pilot used Wikipedia in their classrooms. UC Berkeley’s Brian Carver, Georgetown’s Rochelle Davis and Robin Kelley, and Michigan State’s Jonathan Obar discuss their experiences using Wikipedia as a teaching tool and why they feel like it is a worthwhile endeavor for other professors in the article titled “Assigning Students to Edit Wikipedia: four case studies.” <http://www.wwwords.co.uk/rss/abstract.asp?j=elea&aid=5094&doi=1>

Fellowships

Fellowship reviews are underway to support the professional development of all current WMF fellows. A process for fellows to identify mentors is expected to be launched in September.

Phase 2 of the Teahouse project continued this month with a focus on making it easier for new editors to find the Teahouse and for experienced editors to participate as hosts. As a result of July’s successful experiment with bot-delivered Teahouse invitations, automated invites have now been approved for an extended trial. Guest visits, profile-creation, and questions have increased by 50%, thanks to the small set of improvements that have been piloted thus far.

A sprint focused on hosting, with the aim of building better systems to engage new Teahouse hosts, surface host activity, and make helping in the Teahouse easier to do is nearly complete. Host resources have been simplified, a new host-creation process is live. User feedback so far is positive, and we’ll be measuring changes to host activity in September to determine the impact of these changes.

Dispute Resolution: A 1-month trial of process improvements for filing, tracking, routing and resolving disputes ran in the Dispute Resolution Notice board in August. Mid-month stats have been reported, and the full month’s results will be compiled soon.

Help page redesign: A full report of usability tests ran on existing help pages is being compiled and new designs are being finalized with community input in preparation for a second round of usability testing.

Small Wiki Editor Engagement Project: Step-by-step tutorials to help new editors get started on Bangla Wikipedia are being developed with feedback from the Bangla community. These will be rolled up into a contribution campaign next month in an experiment to increase the number of active Bangla editors.

WikiWomen’s Collaborative: A new gender gap project is being planned with community input. The WikiWomen’s Collaborative is aiming to launch in September with a set of experiments in lightweight social media campaigns tied to clear calls to action for women to edit Wikipedia, and supported by a variety of new-editor resources and community building activities.

Editor Growth and Contribution Program

Logo of the Editor Growth and Contribution Program

A blog post on the outcomes of the first phase pilot of the Contribution portal was published. According to a preliminary analysis, the pilot appears to have a positive effect on the ratio of new editors who make contributions to Wikipedia. (see also general “Highlights” section)

A new design of the contribution portal at Arabic Wikipedia was launched with a new logo emphasizing the concept of the portal as being a gateway to welcome participation in Wikipedia.

Communications

Work in August was largely focussed on preparations for a series of partnership and project announcements, several of which will be pushed to September. Work on the Editors Survey, including translations and technical implementation continued – the survey should launch in early September. The team also worked closely with volunteers on several public initiatives, including the global launch of Wiki Loves Monuments.

Communications relocates to the Legal and Community Advocacy section of WMF starting in September. A big ‘thank you’ to all of the Global Dev team for being great colleagues!

Major Storylines through August

Sue Gardner named on of the World’s 100 most powerful women in Forbes Magazine (August 24, 2012)

WMF ED Sue Gardner made Forbes annual list of the world’s 100 most powerful women, which includes global political figures, tech leaders, celebrities and NGO/Non-profit founders. As the only Canadian in the entire top 100, the news struck a strong chord in north of the US. The news also included a video interview and feature interview with Sue online and in print.

Wide international media coverage of a roughly hour-long WP outage due ultimately to a severed cable near our Tampa data center. Media seemed to enjoy the over-simplified suggestion that all the world’s knowledge could be robbed from the Internet due to a misplaced shovel or a lawnmower.

Predominantly US politic media speculated widely that Wikipedia would be the best place to look for an indication of US Presidential candidate Mitt Romney’s VP running mate. Humorist Steven Colbert added more fuel to the speculation, although the coverage was not as relevant as 2008 when then VP nominee Sarah Palin’s article was substantially improved prior to that announcement.

Media Contact, August 2012

Human Resources

HR focused on supporting the organization in completing the Foundation’s annual review cycle of performance reviews for all employees and launched a review process for Fellows in the Fellowship program. An initial draft of an employee engagement survey was completed, and is in process of revision for a late September rollout.

Department Updates

Finance and Administration

We have been working with a consultant on space optimization, so we can accommodate new hires without adding space in the near future. The first step in this process has been changes to the cubicle layout on the 6th floor.

The audit of the Wikimedia Foundation for the fiscal year ending June 30, 2012 has been started, with the audit scheduled to be presented to the Wikimedia Foundation Audit Committee by the end of September.

The Wikimedia Foundation has issued an RFP for audit and tax services for the fiscal year ending June 30, 2013. Any inquiries on this RFP should be directed to gbyrdwikimedia.org.

Legal and Community Advocacy

Cease and desist stats:

Opened 8 cases

Closed 7 cases

13 letters sent

Total cases open 50

Helped community member recover @wikinews Twitter account

Contract Metrics:

28 – submitted

34 – completed

Trademark Metrics:

24 – submitted

7 – approved

11 – pending

4 – denied

2 – request withdrawn

Two new LCA Community Programs

Legal Fee Defense Fund RfC Started

The Request for Comment (RfC) outlines a program designed to assist community functionaries with legal fees in the event of a lawsuit brought against them in relation to their activities as functionaries. The RfC sets forth the details of the program and the applicable guidelines. LCA is hoping it will close favorably in early October and go for board approval at the October board meeting. (see also general “Highlights” section)

Advocacy Advisory Group Established

This group will provide a community venue to discuss political and legislative developments worldwide that affect our mission, such as censorship laws and proposals that seek to restrict a free and open Internet.

Anyone can join the list, bring up topics for discussion, and participate.

In response to community and OTRS requests, the legal team took actions regarding to the Pulp-pedia spoof website that attempts to mirror Wikipedia, however includes modified content that is in some cases profane, defamatory or otherwise harmful. We will continue to seek a final resolution.

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